Category Archives: Best blog posts

Jun 25 2013
19 Comments
Best blog posts, Food, Posts about Breakfast, San Francisco, Writing

Why I Don’t Give Restaurant Recommendations

Ghee-colored pancakes

Ghee-colored pancakes

Over the past year, I’ve eaten breakfast at 43 different restaurants in the Bay Area.

Every Friday morning, I wake at the godly hour of 5:15 am and leave the house by 6:30 to go eat breakfast at 7:00 at a new restaurant – always a new restaurant.

Every time, to what extent possible, I get breakfast meat, pancakes, hashbrowns, eggs, coffee, and toast. It’s a feast for one, for my heart and soul. Do you know what color the sunshine is on Friday mornings at 7:00 am as it streams over a short stack of pancakes? It’s butter. It’s clarified butter. It’s ghee.

Listen here – the  hours between 5 and 7 am are a secret. No one knows about them, and during those hours the most extraordinary things occur. Different buildings appear and familiar ones change shape.

Houseboats float in the air next to colorful songbirds, and both are feathered and free. The morning streets are gleeful, speaking with each other in excitement about the coming day. AT&T park enjoys its morning coffee before being filled up with and vomited on by Giants fans. The Embarcadero bends and sways in a morning song before it’s drowned out by business heels tramping to their desks.

And if you’re out at that hour, you’re one of the lucky ones. You get to see the other side.

Restaurants are magical in the morning. Only the most faithful, the most loyal patrons are present, eating their usuals. The staff is chatting with each other, getting ready for the day. Everyone is at their best. There’s no anger, no stress. Everyone sighs in bliss together. A plate of pancakes at 7:30 am is unlike a plate of pancakes at 11:00 am. Corned beef hash at 7:19 am is unlike corned beef hash at 11:02 am. The former is a treasure, the latter a commodity. The former is enchanted, the latter ordinary.

Restaurants that open at 6:30 and 7 am love their patrons and open early for that reason, to serve them the food they need to get to where they’re going. Sometimes the upholstery on the booths is cracking and the stuffing is coming out. Sometimes the decor made up of dusty fake plants and faded Polaroids on the wall, but at the best of places, this all points to a love of people. And what could make the food taste better than brotherly love?

I have an unmitigated love for magic breakfast. Each time I get up and venture into the morning world, it’s the best experience of my life.

When others hear me speak of my breakfast love and of my many adventures, they often ask me which one was my favorite. I instantly freeze up and have no idea how to respond. What do they want me to tell them? Where they can get the best food? The most pleasant atmosphere? The edgiest cuisine? The cutest waiters?

Am I a god that I should judge these things for other people?

For me, the hot stack of 7:25 am pancakes in front of me is always the best food I’ve ever tasted. The snaggle-toothed, wide-hipped waitress with a bad dye job is always the most beautiful woman in the world. A mostly empty restaurant with yellowing posters of Hawaii on the wall is always the most incredible atmosphere I’ve ever experienced. The gentle song of coffee refills, newspaper shuffling, and morning phlegm-clearings is always the most lovely music I’ve ever heard.

Come with me one morning at 7:00 am, and maybe you’ll see what I see too. Until then, be wary of asking me for restaurant recommendations. They might not prove as useful as you might guess.

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If you want to read more about how much I love breakfast, check out these posts: Oh My God, It’s Breakfast in Istanbul, I am the Breakfast Whisperer, Your Life Coach Recommends Biscuits from Pork Store Cafe

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Jun 20 2012
19 Comments
Best blog posts, Food, Humorous, One minute read

God in the Kitchen, Making Casserole

This is from The Far Side. Please don’t sue me.

This is the concluding post of the Miracles of Midwestern Cooking series.

Sometimes I think of the whole world as one big casserole, assembled in a glass dish God purchased at Wal-Mart and set to cook at 350 million degrees Fahrenheit, with all of the  creatures, both plant and animal, bubbling together for millions of years.

North America is the cream of chicken soup. England is cream of mushroom. France supplies the butter and cream, while Italy comes up with some carbs and Germany throws in its brats.

India and China add spice and Japan classes it up. North Africa brings the sweet with the salty, West Africa tosses in some peanuts, South America beefs it up and adds the lime juice and beans.

Other regions mix in their own special beats, the carbs and proteins they love best and all of the roasting and toasting and broasting they do to get them just right.

We’re topped with a combination of cheddar cheese ozone and fried onions that sizzle and melt under our very own star.

As the goop swims around we learn stuff, finding that some things are delicious on their own, but most often they taste better together. That’s why there should be world peace, because cream of mushroom soup is a physical abomination by itself and spices need something to go on.

I’m not advocating an Indian-spiced cream of mushroom soup, but you get my point.

And in the end maybe a casserole isn’t the best metaphor for earth, because casseroles can be kind of gross and uncivilized. Then again, so can humans.

Probably the best reason the casserole metaphor falls apart is because each of these regions developed at the same time over many years from the same primordial cream of human soup instead of being added separately. None of us could be where we are without the other.

But I still like the image of God in the kitchen, mixing together the most epic casserole of the day. I hope it tastes good.

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Jun 05 2012
25 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Job hunting, Two minute read

The Cover Letter that Gets the Job

I’m coming for you.

Listen up, mother narker

I know what you’re thinking. You’re at work, wearing your power skirts and wrist-control cuff links, and you think that this is just another cover letter, just another piece of pre-trash that you need to skim before taking your 15th M&M break of the day. Turns out the power to control human destinies doesn’t energize like it used to.

Your precious bundles of neurons are throbbing with boredom from the mediocrity of the stack that lies before you. Where is a peer? Where is the employee so detail oriented she counts her Lucky Charms and times herself on the john?

Where is that special someone with the suit-wearing abilities of a psychopath and marketing skills of nervous high-school nerds trying to convince Big Bob he doesn’t want to beat them up?  All you want is someone with a degree from every Ivy league university and 59 years of experience that has brought the total costs of running a company down to zero while increasing efficiency by 867 percent. Is that too much to ask?

Well let me tell you something, you open-gobbed hand-shaker. I don’t have any of that crap, and I’m not about to sit here and dump out my purse for you and tell you why my tic-tacs are the best ones for this company and how I really am the go-getter you’re looking for because I punched someone when they tried to cut me in line.

I’ve been out there. I’ve met with the graduates of this generation and I was parented by the last generation and I have some friends who belong to the place in between. You think they have something I don’t? You’re wrong, dead wrong. Your last-season shoes and chipped coffee mug tell the whole, sad story. You’ve spent your life trying to find the best and the brightest in the front displays of department stores, hand picking the newest merchandise that still smells slightly of formaldehyde. Then they come in and what do you get? Beneath their shiny surfaces, they’re turds like the rest of us.

This is the best it gets, sweetie. Leave Nordstroms and you’ll see me there on the street. I’ll be playing a pan pipe and have an overly-exited following of neighborhood dogs. Watch me closer. I’ll take those dogs across the street and trade them to the CEO of a start-up tech company called Whiznit for thirty bucks. I’ll take that thirty bucks and come back to Nordstroms and offer to take you out to a cheap lunch and tell you why I’m the best person for this job. Because let’s face it, you can get a shiny Gucci bag from any street corner in the world, but they only make me in Oklahoma, baked in the close confines of an over-crowded womb and served in a harsh world that doesn’t give out any favors. Hire me.

Sincerely,

Snotting Black

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Mar 09 2012
46 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Modern Life, Three minute read

Why People Love Tasting Gross Food

Who would think this could taste bad?

It’s happened to everyone at some point. You’re at the new Thai restaurant when the adventurer of the group tries to shows off and orders Thai black glutinous rice for dessert. To everyone else this is clearly a terrible mistake. The dish is presented to the table and looks unfortunately like a dark puddle of goo.

Silence. Stares are exchanged around the table between each other and the bowl of black slime. The daredevil laughs it off and goes in for a bite, strings of goo stretching from the spoon. Still chuckling confidently, she puts the spoon in her mouth. Suddenly, her face goes completely blank. Her stomach drops and cuddles with her bowels. Her face crumples in horror at the substance she’s ingested. Just like everyone thought and as the name itself suggests, the Thai black glutinous rice is disgusting. With everyone watching, the sad victim swallows bravely, gasps for air, and then says, “This. is. foul. Do you guys want a bite?” Everyone says yes.

Why do the others want to taste this obviously disgusting dessert? Haven’t they learned from their friend’s experience? This same phenomenon also occurs in cases of particularly nasty stenches or weird things you can do to your body to make it hurt.

In my capacity as a rational being, I understand that one should not want to eat unpleasant food, smell something that will makes one salivate yet also wish for death, or inflict harm upon one’s body, and yet I go for the bait each time.

The thing is, even though I know something tastes bad, I will never know how bad it is unless I experience it myself. Is it sawdust wafer cookie bad or partially raw meatloaf bad? Is it stale pop tart bad or putrefying chicken bad? How disgusting is it? Will I want to vomit or just laugh it off? Will a drink of water be enough or will I claw at my tongue with my fingernails? Will my eyes water and my nose run? Will I perspire from the hands? The armpits? To what extent will my gag reflex be activated? To what ring of hell will I descend? I have to know!

And I’m not the only one. I know others out there seek to understand just how repulsive life can be. That’s why these bizarre cultural things exist.

How will you fully understand everything a hamburger can be if you don’t eat a fancy $20 dollar one from a restaurant, and a sixty cent one that is inexplicably slimy from Peaches Cafeteria in West Virginia? Can you truly appreciate the sweetest of perfumes without stumbling upon a pile of gym laundry that has remained damp for 6 months in the corner of a male locker room? What does a feather pillow mean to you if you haven’t been afraid your entire nose is going to crust up and fall off because of the severity of an oozing sunburn?

Yes, these things are disgusting, but they are a part of life, and I embrace them. In some way or another, we all do. These dances with repulsion build solidarity where we experience everything life can be. I believe they even add to life’s beauty.

On that note, do you want a bite of this gas station hot dog?

P.S. My apologies to anyone who likes Thai black glutinous rice.

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Feb 14 2012
35 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Two minute read

This Guy Sucks

Hey! You suck! 

There sure are a lot of problems these days. The way I see it, things kind of suck the whole world over. Here in Egypt, people are pissed off that life isn’t much better after the revolution. It turns out you can’t teach old scum bags new tricks and the old men who stayed in charge from Mubarak’s era are still good-for-nothing tax gobblers. In America, even though we are completely satisfied with our politicians, we are still constantly embarrassed by, among other things, the extravagant cost of higher education, pesky racial divides, our obesity, our impressive income inequality, and the fact we want to stay really rich but seem to have no money.

I could go on and discuss the pathetic state of our judicial system, the fact we’re losing our competitive edge to  developing countries whose foods we like, and the seeming illiteracy of the coming generation, but then I’d start to get sleepy from the sadness.

When confronted with all these issues, it’s hard to know who to blame. There are simply too many candidates. Do I blame Barack Obama, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Soviets, Europe, poodles, Mom, Dad…who? And I can’t blame something nebulous like “human nature” or the “capitalist system” or “greed.” That’s not nearly satisfying enough. I want a face I can yell at, an ugly mug I can jab at and say, “You suck!”

That’s why, for the past five minutes, I’ve been searching relentlessly for someone who can be the recipient of all our rage, some lame schmuck that can be the symbol of every inefficiency and injustice that exists. After minutes of intensely focused effort,  I think I found him. It’s this guy.

It’s all his fault! He did it! He decided to invade Iraq, Vietnam, and Cuba at great financial and moral cost to the US. It was him! He’s the one who has been melting the glaciers and strangling endangered species.  At night, while good Americans are at home with their families, reading their children bedtime stories, he’s out whispering into the ears of politicians and selling them his fancy new weapons and giving them ideas for how to use them.

He causes skin cancer! He stokes the fires of racial division! He made our educational system unequal! It was fine before he came along, but then BOOM everything was awful!

He’s why Americans are too fat! He’s why middle school girls dress like Ke$ha! He’s the cause of partisan conflict in the White House! He’s why Oklahoma isn’t Colorado! He’s why many Americans have their most intimate relationships with TSA officials! He made healthcare expensive! He created Valentine’s Day!

It’s his fault! I don’t care about the other issues. What will the stance of our future political leaders be on this guy? Will it be a resolute “Let’s get him!” or a pathetic “Let’s allow him to continue trampling our society and future.” Isn’t the answer obvious?

I say let’s get him and while we’re at it, let’s have a good yell.

“YOU SUCK!”

photo credit: Ambro at freedigitalphotos.net

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